


Deceit

by AugustStories



Series: Game of Thrones Season 8 Oneshots [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Episode: s08e03 The Long Night, choosing on purpose to not include any other names, it would spoil the whole plottwist of this, literally don't know how to tag this without spoilering the punchline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 14:59:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18831016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AugustStories/pseuds/AugustStories
Summary: He waited.All his life he had been preparing for this one moment.This one moment.





	Deceit

**Author's Note:**

> I have for unexplainable reason grown very fond of Harry Strickland.
> 
> And I also don't appreciate at all what they have done with the Golden Company in Season 8, I love the rest but that just made me so salty, so this brainchild was born.
> 
> Enjoy or find it strange, I just wanted to write it and post it.

He waited.

All his life he had been waiting, plotting, scheming.

All his life he had been preparing for this one moment.

This one moment.

It came closer with a short letter smuggled into the small council chamber of the Red Keep as the Queen's advisor's were holding council over the progress of the battle preparation for the city. The North had won the fight against the Night King with great losses and was now preparing to march South, and as the Queen turned to her Hand and her pretend King with victory shining in her eyes, he smiled to himself and he waited still.

Everything had come together perfectly.

The cyvasse pieces of his plan moving all on their own to the strategy he had breathed life into.

Soon.

Soon.

That night Euron Greyjoy left the city with his men, out to man the ships to defend the waterway towards King's Landing, out to destroy the Targaryen fleet.

Out to die.

The Captains needed only one look of him as they departed from the celebratory supper in the Great Hall to know the time had come, and how it had come. They moved out. Everyone knew their role.

Every man knew their role.

He walked up to the rooms given to him close to the Tower of the Hand, he walked up the stairs and with every step his smile grew bigger and bigger. He stepped into his given sleeping chamber just as outside the sun dipped into the sea and the darkness of night took over the red hue of dusk.

And wasn't that a splendid beginning?

He began to unclasp and unbuckle his armor, piece by piece until he was standing in the middle of the room in only his smallclothes, an identity stripped away. His squires lit candles, his two closest confidantes opened chests.

Time had come.

At last.

At last he stared at his image in the looking glass as he reached for the ring on his left hand, a twist, a pull and it came off, and in the looking glass short blond hair turned black. In the looking glass bright blue eyes turned purple. In the looking glass Harry Strickland died. A man died who had never been, a facade, a trick, a name among many.

In the looking glass Aegor Blackfyre was reborn.

\--

They dressed him quickly but orderly, he wanted nothing to be out of place in what was to become the greatest moment of his life, the moment that had been a hundred and ten years in the making. Full armor in black and red and gold, hands working methodically on fastening it while he watched it all happen, watched this image come alive right on his skin.

It got finished with the red cloak being draped over his shoulders and fastened to the chestplate, and he turned on light feet to see the black three-headed dragon displayed on the back.

"Get ready," he told the grown men who had come with him and they nodded, leaving without saying a word, nothing needed to be spoken about anymore, everyone had their role to play. His older squire carefully pulled the wrapped scabbard from the bottom of the bigger chest and handed it over with nervousness portrayed in blue eyes. Aegor took it with one hand and used the other to cup a pale face, "Don't be nervous, you did well."

"Thank you, Com... Your Grace," the boy corrected himself quickly, flushing over the slip up, he smiled it away, gently patted a cheek and then let go again. He unwrapped the scabbard and then fluently used a flick of his wrist and a swing of his arm to draw the sword.

A sword that sang because it was home.

"Do you want the crown as well, Your Grace?" His younger squire asked, already holding the locked box from the smaller chest. Aegor shook his head, drawing a finger along the edge of the glimmering sword, over the rubies, along the dragonheads.  
"Keep it for now," he said after a brief pause, "You will ward it, protect it until I call for you in the morning," he gave both boys their last orders in their old lives and both of them nodded earnestly, drawing their swords.

"Beneath the gold, the bitter steel."

"Beneath the gold, the bitter steel," he repeated and then left the room, lips flickering into another smile when he heard the locks click into place. Reliable boys. He walked down the small corridor until he came to the staircase where seven figures dressed in gold armor and white cloaks greeted him with somber but determined faces. He looked from one to the next and they remained in silence until the clang of the bells signaled the hour of the wolf.

"Let's begin."

\--

Twenty thousand men.

The Golden Company counted twenty thousand disciplined and highly trained sellswords, knights and squires.

Twenty thousand determined fighters who had been given complete free movement of the city and the Red Keep, ample opportunities to place themselves in every necessary corner.

Twenty thousand men who moved who moved as one as the bells rang for the end of the day.

Rang for the last day of Queen Cersei Lannister.

\--

Cutting down every last Lannister soldier in the Red Keep was a feat that was embarassingly easy, no seasoned fighters, no brutes, no extraordinary knight, the lion army was made up of green boys and dimwitted fools.

The Kingsguard of Aegor Blackfyre, First of His Name, Rightful Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, made short work of the small council members and their sworn swords. Killing those who refused to bent the knee to the new King, imprisoning those who did for their hesitation in the Black Cells.

Qyburn died at Aegor's own hands, died under the blade of Valyrian steel that glittered golden in the light of torches amounted on the walls of the man's creepily stocked solar.

"Burn the contents of this room and the body," Aegor told Ser Daren, wiped Blackfyre clean on a bedsheet and then strode from the room and the tower again, surrounded by now six White Knights. He dispatched half of them to join the legion of Captain Lysono who were tasked with infiltrating and subdue Maegor's Holdfast, and with shackeling the now former Queen.

Aegor's path turned without fault towards the throne room.

To the Iron Throne.

\--

Once upon a time there had been two brothers whose father was a king, the older was the favourite and he had almost all. The King's love, the King's favor, the sword, the skills, the charme, the wife, the heirs. The younger had the one thing missing, he had the drive.

Aegon the Fourth legitimized his Great Bastards and House Blackfyre was born.

The older brother was Daemon Blackfyre, the man who carried the sword, the man who was usurped of his throne by a traitorous bastard who called himself King.

The younger brother was Aegor Rivers, the man they called Bittersteel, the man who made it his life's mission to set his brother's line on the Iron Throne.

Daemon betrothed his favourite daughter to Aegor and then he died on the Redgrass Field, the First Blackfyre Rebellion ending bloody for the Black Dragon but it wasn't their end. More Rebellions followed and as one by one Daemon's sons and grandsons fell and proved more and more useless, Aegor Rivers began a secret plan of his own.

The only ones knowing? His wife. Calla Blackfyre, the only remaining child of Daemon's.

Daemon's male line failed where Aegor's prospered. 

Calla gave him children and they picked, married daughters off to Pentoshi Princes and Magisters, to Volantene Triarchs, to rich Lysene merchants, to the Archon of Tyrosh. They sent a son into the Iron Bank. Another son off to the Citadel in Oldtown.

And then came his youngest, the last, the perfect one.

They called him Daemon, after his grandfather, after the brother and best friend Aegor had lost to the Usurper and his traitors.

Aegor died not two years later but he died knowing he had a son to carry on his legacy, to carry on Daemon's legacy. Calla took the moving of the cyvasse pieces into her hands, raised her son in secrecy from her brothers' lines who were still fighting each other and the traitors in Westeros, the Golden Company their toys. She raised her youngest child in all there was, in all he had to know, Daemon was bright, he was strong, he was cunning, he was charming.

He was his father and his grandfather in one.

In 260AC, Daemon counted twenty and two namedays, Maelys the Monstrous died on the Stepstones and Calla opened the gates of their home in Lys to the desolated Golden Company, her last act before the Stranger claimed her.

A plan was born and waiting had begun.

Daemon didn't join the Company, he let others lead, supported the Captain Generals as they rose and fell over the years, but he always held the secret weapon in hiding. The Company, the world, thought Blackfyre lost, Daemon waited.

He waited and watched how in Westeros the Targaryen rule began to crumble.

In 279AC, as Westeros celebrated the marriage of their Silver Prince to a Dornish Princess, Daemon celebrated the birth of his heir. His son. Named for his father. Four daughters had come before him, four daughters played out to follow in his parents' examples, marrying influential people and one becoming a Priestress for the Lord of Light. With his son ready to carry the Crown of Old Valyrian bloodlines, Daemon's role was completed and he closed his eyes forever.

Aegor Blackfyre took the ring his sister gave him and became someone else, he rose in the ranks of the Golden Company with the same ease his father had once had in founding them. He revealed his secret to the Captains after they voted him Captain General, after they made him Commander.

And then they waited.

Waited for the right moment to strike.

\--

The throne hall was empty and quiet as Aegor walked past the Kingsguard who had pushed open the door for him, he walked over the stones that his grandfather and his great-grandfather had once walked upon, the stones his father had dreamed about walking on.

He walked and raised his head, set his eyes upon the Iron Throne as Company men filteres out into the hall to light the braziers and the torches. Aegor wouldn't need the fire light to see the throne, to see his birthright, to see his destiny.

His feet were easy, his back was straight as he ascended the stairs, the now four Kingsguard reforming behind him and taking their positions without any command. 

Aegor turned and then sat down, Blackfyre set upon his lap.

He looked out over the hall were the assembled men of the Company who had followed them with their tasks fulfilled knelt in silence.

Aegor smiled.

"Welcome home."

\--

In the morning, as the sun rose over King's Landing and pyres still burned outside the city wall with the murdered Lannister soldiers, as the Blackwater Bay glimmered golden with the returning fleet of what was now Company ships, the people woke to new banners floating from the battlements and the Red Keep.

A quartered banner of a stallion with black dragon wings on a golden field and a black dragon on a field of blood.

The people of Westeros awakened to a Blackfyre King on the Iron Throne.

**Author's Note:**

> I think instead of episode codas, this series has now turned into "what could have beens". I do love this season but there are just some small things that sometimes pop into my head. 
> 
> ...because I have weird expectations.


End file.
